In the present work, we analyze the distribution of Bitcoin across entities of different sizes, taking into consideration addresses that belong to exchanges and miners as well. We aim to shine more light on the true underlying distribution of BTC across network participants, and show that Bitcoin ownership is much less concentrated than often reported

We divide network entities according to their Bitcoin holdings into the following marine species:

• Shrimps (<1 BTC)
• Crab (1-10 BTC)
• Octopus (10-50 BTC)
• Fish (50-100 BTC)
• Dolphin (100-500 BTC)
• Shark (500-1,000 BTC)
• Whale (1,000-5,000 BTC)
• Humpback (>5,000 BTC). 

As of January 2021, the Bitcoin supply distribution across these categories looks as follows



Note that there is an uptrend in whale ownership that occurred over the past year. We address this matter further below.

As expected, the number of estimated entities is heavily skewed towards small holders.

We can derive that around 2% of network entities control 71.5% of all Bitcoin. Note that this figure is substantially different from the often propagated "2% control 95% of the supply".